Remember all those times when any evidence presented to support TUSD’s Mexican-American studies just never seemed enough? Despite teachers, professors and students pointing out graduation rates, better AIMS test scores, overall improvement in other classes and more kids going on to college, it still didn’t convince detractors.
Even after the Cambium Audit, commissioned by state Superintendent of Public Instruction John Huppenthal contradicted his claims that it violated state laws, (an audit which Huppenthal then tried to hide from the press), the numbers didn’t mean enough.
School board member Michael Hicks blamed student loyalty on the spell of magical burritos. School board member Mark Stegeman said that award-winning teacher Curtis Acosta’s literature class seemed like a cult. Sure, why not?
Well, we suggest that you give this a read: An Empirical Analysis of the Effects of Mexican American Studies Participation on Student Achievement within Tucson Unified School District.
Pull up a seat and download it right here:
112886925-Emprical-Analysis-MAS-Report-2012.pdf
The report was submitted June 20, 2012 to the court-appointed desegregation special master Willis Hawley for the TUSD desegregation case. Hawley is the architect for the desegregation plan that was just released to the public on Friday evening. He’s pulled together a deseg plan that (gasp!) brings back MAS and other systems that, for the most part, everyone seems to agree upon.
Cabrera did the report with UA College of Education Professor Jeffrey F. Milem and UA Dean Ronald W. Marx. In the introduction, it states that Hawley requested the analysis to “examine the relationship between participating in the (TUSD) Mexican American Studies program and student achievement (positively, negatively or no relationship).”
Returning to the three hypotheses that drove these analyses, no empirical evidence indicated that MAS participation adversely affected student achievement. Moreover, there is sufficient empirical evidence in analyses of two of the three outcomes (AIMS passing and graduation) to reject the null hypothesis (i.e., there is no significant relationship). Of the 12 regression models predicting AIMS passing, MAS participation was positively related to the dependent variable in every case and seven of these relationships were significant. A similar trend existed for graduation rates. MAS participation was positively related to graduating in all eight regression models, and this relationship was significant in six of them. These results suggest that there is a consistent, significant, positive relationship between MAS participation and student academic performance.
This article appears in Nov 8-14, 2012.
Just thinking that some angy old white conservatives don’t like Mexican-Amricans getting ahead in Arizona and taking their power away….why is that…it’s coming anyway…give it another 8 years on it’s own…but Cultural Studies is one way to a homogenous society that thrives…it’s kind of like the America we knew 20 years ago before all this Partisanship stuff took on a life of it’s own.
I read it and I’ve read a lot of statistical research papers in the past.
The title is completely misleading as “Before the sampling was conducted, students who attended schools where MAS courses were not offered were eliminated from consideration”.
Therefore the Title really should be “An Empirical Analysis of the Effects of Mexican American Studies Participation on Student Achievement within schools offering MAS classes in the Tucson Unified School District.”
I am certainly not anti-MAS but it does lead to the question of whether MAS classes take away resources from non-MAS students at the schools where they are offered, as the schools where they are not offered were eliminated from being part of the random sample upon which the entire statistical reference is based.
They compared similar demographics but did they compare average class sizes and individual attention for MAS and non-MAS? Thay may have been an intervening variable.
Definitely worth more study.
Excuse my typos: period goes before the quote in the second sentence, and it should be “that” instead of “thay” in the second to last sentence. Before someone takes aim at my poor typing skills.
I don’t think that any ethnic/racial group should have special classes tailored towards them. Standard US History classes go into the Civil Rights movement, and the history of Mexican Americans, as well as all other groups. I went to TUSD for all my K-12 education, and I remember how the MeCHA classes drove a wedge between white and minority students. I was given really dirty looks when I asked what the classes were about when I first learned about them. Imagine going to a high school where all the Latinos are raving about the “MAS” classes, and all others are sort of excluded. Will there be special african american “MAS” classes? I’m part Native American, (though I look very white), will there be special native american “MAS” classes for me and other natives, not including Latinos?
The Supreme Court will likely put an end to affirmative action, and reverse discrimination, and some studies show that this will actually help minorities who are put into schools where they are more likely to fail, and it will end the animosity that such programs bred. Asian students, who are minorities and have faced some of the worst historical discrimination in this country (internment camps in WW2), are hurt by affirmative action, and lose seats they have earned at prestigious schools to others.
I’m 1/4 native, and a lot of folks are mixed race these days, are we going to ask about percentage ethnicities for college admissions too?! Race based policies, special treatment for certain groups, isn’t giving everybody a fair shot at the American dream.
TUSD is way behind the times.